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As Harvard students gear up for the 141st annual Harvard-Yale football game with free merch and the annual Bulldog Roast, many also had to get creative to attend the game after tickets sold out.

To attend the game, which is hosted by Yale in New Haven this year, students had to secure transportation and a ticket that is sold for $35 on a more limited basis than the free tickets that Harvard students receive when The Game is hosted in Cambridge. Both Harvard’s discounted tickets and the University’s shuttle spots sold out less than 24 hours after they were released — and many were left scrambling.

“Those sold out too fast,” Aidan T. Smith ’27 said. “This is what I get for being lazy.”

Harvard’s currently undefeated football team will face off against Yale this Saturday in New Haven for the chance to win both the Ivy League championship outright and obtain a bid to the NCAA’s football postseason championship for the first time since 1945. In interviews, students said they are optimistic that Harvard will break its three-year losing streak to Yale this year.

“Yale’s going down this year,” Karolina A. Spiewak ’28 said. “I feel it in my bones.”

Students said that the team’s impressive 9-0 record in the 2025 season has heightened expectations ahead of The Game.

“School spirit is very high,” Julia High ’26 said. “The team has done a great job of getting everyone hyped up.”

Harvard College started selling a limited number of shuttle tickets at 7 p.m. on Nov. 4 to transport students to New Haven. The shuttles filled up the next day, according to a College spokesperson.

“I was on the website at 7 even though I was at a Playboy Carti concert,” Ezra S. Rottman ’29 said. “I needed to get my ticket.”

Students who did not manage to secure a College-sponsored shuttle ticket said they are resorting to either renting cars, buying train tickets, or riding shuttles sponsored by student organizations.

But shuttle seats were not the only tickets students had to fight for. This year, Harvard offered only 2,900 discounted student tickets, which sold out in less than 13 hours. Some students said they are relying on friends at Yale to secure them a seat. Others attempted to buy tickets off of other Harvard students.

Many students said Harvard-Yale is the one event of the year that can draw out large crowds of students from a campus infamous for an uninspiring social scene.

“Harvard-Yale is usually one of the few moments where we actually come together as a college to come out for an event,” Smith said. “Even people who have all but said they hate this place will come out to Harvard-Yale.”

Waseem Ahmad ’27 joked that Harvard admissions might screen out “diehard football fans.” Still, Ahmad said Harvard-Yale is one of the most hyped-up events of the year.

“No matter what you’ve heard about Harvard or how you feel about it, when we go to Yale or when we go to New Haven,” he said, “we’re gonna act like Harvard’s the best school in the world.”

—Staff writer Chantel A. De Jesus can be reached at chantel.dejesus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @c_a_dejesus.

—Staff writer Wyeth Renwick can be reached at wyeth.renwick@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @wzrenwick.